American financial services giant JPMorgan Chase has brought on Todd Combs, a former Berkshire Hathaway executive, to run a section of the USD 1.5 trillion security-and-resiliency plan, who officially joined the company earlier this month.
Combs, who worked as the investment manager for legendary Wall Street investor Warren Buffett, in addition to being the CEO of Geico Insurance for Berkshire Hathaway, heads the USD 10 billion strategic-investment group and serves as a special adviser to JPMorgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon.
“Todd Combs is one of the greatest investors and leaders I’ve known, having successfully managed investments alongside the most respected and successful long-term investor of our time, Warren Buffett,” Dimon said.
Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman, endorsed the move, stating that Combs is leaving to accept “an interesting and important job at JPMorgan.”
“JPMorgan, as is the usual case, has made a good decision,” he added.
The appointment follows JPMorgan’s announcement in October this year, saying that it would invest USD 1.5 trillion over the next 10 years in companies that are “critical to national economic security and resiliency,” apart from directly investing USD 10 billion in companies that are critical to American national security. Combs will oversee the bank’s direct equity investments as part of this initiative, while sourcing deals in areas like technology, defence, rare earths, robotics, and medicines, targeting smaller and mid-sized businesses instead of large-scale acquisitions, according to a Reuters report.
Meet Todd Combs
Born in 1971, Todd Anthony Combs has been interested in domains like business, financial systems, and analytical problem-solving since his childhood. He graduated from high school and earned a Bachelor of Science from Florida State University before pursuing an MBA at Columbia Business School, where value-investing principles are deeply ingrained in the curriculum, which Warren Buffett also attended. This educational background led to Combs’ long-term, fundamentals-based investment philosophy.
Combs did not start his career on Wall Street but in the world of financial regulation, working as an analyst for the “Banking, Securities and Finance Division” of the State of Florida, reviewing institutions for compliance and risk exposure, learning about the operations of banks and insurers, and later moving to “Progressive Insurance,” where he held increasingly technical jobs in pricing and risk management, gaining a foundational understanding of insurance economics that would serve him well over the years.
In 2005, Combs took another entrepreneurial leap and established “Castle Point Capital Management,” a long-term-oriented hedge fund based in Connecticut, dedicated to endowments, foundations, and institutional clients, as CEO and Managing Member, where he was known for careful research, disciplined capital allocation, and a solid knowledge of the financial services sector. His results and analysis started to garner attention well beyond the size of the fund, even from the most experienced investors and industry leaders.
In 2010, Combs reached another career highlight when Warren Buffett named him one of the investment managers of Berkshire Hathaway, which has billions in equity investments and where Combs is one of a handful of people Buffett zeroed in on as his investment decision-making successors.
He assumed even more leadership responsibilities in early 2020 when he became CEO of GEICO, Berkshire’s flagship auto-insurance company, where he helped steer the company through industry disruptions and modernise various parts of its operations. He also became a director of the JPMorgan Chase Board of Directors in 2016, where he currently sits at the intersection of banking, insurance, and long-term investment strategy.